


350. drifting away

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [102]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 14:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8251819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Helena doesn't come to family dinner on Thursday.





	

Their family meets for dinner every Thursday – the night when Alison has no meetings and Cosima has no parties and Sarah has none of Kira’s shows or games or club meetings to go to and Helena is Helena, which means she’s always free. Helena has an alert on her phone that goes off one-hour-before with a noise like a dog barking. She doesn’t need the alert. She always knows.

Here, in the woods, a dog barking. Every minute or two it barks. Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark! And it goes quiet again. Helena is fishing out by the river, filled with melting ice-slush, and the dog barks and barks and then eventually stops barking. Helena catches four fish. She’s going to cook them over her little grill and eat them and she’ll be full. She won’t be hungry at all.

She eats dinner while the sun sets, out in the woods. Her phone stops barking. Her phone doesn’t make a single sound.

* * *

_> hey you gonna be late or what?_  
_> helena_  
_ >helena seriously would you charge your bloody phone for once_

* * *

“There you are,” says Sarah, ducking to get through the doorway of Helena’s hut. She wrinkles her nose a little bit as she does. This is probably because of the smell. It smells like: fish. Also: Helena. Sometimes Helena forgets to bathe, out in the woods, so she probably does not smell very good either.

“Hello, _sestra_ ,” Helena says. She’s cleaning fish scales off all the places where they managed to fall. They glitter on her fingertips.

Sarah doesn’t answer her; she’s busy picking up Helena’s phone and frowning at the lack of notifications. “Thought your phone was dead,” she says. “Where were you last night?”

“Busy,” Helena says, which is not an answer at all. Sarah looks over at her, frowns some more. She’s going to get wrinkles if she keeps frowning like that. Helena loves her.

“Too busy for dinner?” Sarah says. “Alison made pork chops, I know that’s your – fifth-favorite, or sommat.”

The truth is everything is Helena’s favorite, but Sarah probably knows that already. She sighs, runs a hand through her hair, sits down on the floor next to Helena. She looks right sitting on a deer-pelt, like she belongs. Something in Sarah has always belonged to the woods, Helena knows, but Sarah likes running from the places where she belongs so Helena doesn’t think she’ll ever figure it out.

“Tell her thank you for me,” Helena says, which isn’t an answer either.

“Or you could tell her,” Sarah says, voice easy. She reaches out and pokes at a scale Helena missed. Her fingertip is silver now, until she reaches up and places the scale on Helena’s cheekbone. She gives Helena one of those small secretive little smiles, like they’ve been a family their whole lives and this sort of thing comes easy. In other words: like a small and friendly lie.

“Seriously,” Sarah says. “What’s wrong? Someone say somethin’?”

“No,” Helena says quickly, because they would _never_ , because they are Helena’s family and Helena loves them and they would never hurt her. On purpose. “I was just busy.” She looks down at her silver-glitter hands. They look pretty. Helena would leave the fish scales on them, unwashed, only she’d smear them on everything she touched and she would ruin all of it.

She clenches her hands into fists. She feels the words in her throat: _I don’t fit and it’s better I just stay away until everyone stops pretending that they care about me and it’ll be easier when I’m gone and no one is knocking over the sugar bowl or eating too much or burping at the wrong time or being hard to love_. It seemed noble when she thought about it on Wednesday. It seemed like the right thing to do. Being with her family feels like ripping a hole open in them, and if Helena stays away for long enough it’ll heal on its own. Without even a scar.

But her mouth stays closed, and Sarah just mutters _alright_ in an uneasy sort of way that means she knows Helena’s lying and Helena just – Helena just – Helena just wants her to keep pushing, so that she has no choice but to open her mouth and let the words spill out. She wants to be backed into a corner, by Sarah, by her sister, so that she has to be honest.

But Sarah is kind. And Sarah won’t push. And the fish tasted good, and pork chops are only her fifth-favorite anyways. And it’s not like she’s lonely. She can call the others any time.

All these thoughts glitter pretty on her brain, like little silver scales. Helena doesn’t think too hard about them, so she doesn’t scare them off.

“You better be there next Thursday,” Sarah says with a gruff, joking menace. “Clear your calendar.”

“Yes,” Helena says. “I will clear it.” Or maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll pack up her house and move somewhere else, deeper in the woods, and hold her breath and wait to stop hoping her family will look for her there.

“Good,” Sarah says. Out of the corner of Helena’s eye she can see Sarah looking at her, but she doesn’t look back. All she does is reach up, and scrub the back of her hand across her face until the scale Sarah put there flutters away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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